


Waiting

by Person



Category: Back to the Future
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat, the years inbetween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it felt like Doc had spent thirty years waiting.  Waiting for the time when he could build his greatest invention, and waiting for the day when his best friend would be born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pie_is_good](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pie_is_good/gifts).



There was nothing quite as frustrating as being an inventor who needed to ignore everything he already knew about the greatest thing that he'd ever create and focus his mind on lesser inventions instead. If he'd been a less patient man he could easily have finished the time machine years--if not decades!--ahead of schedule with the extra leap forward he'd been given by the chance he'd had to study the finished contraption while working out how best to funnel the lightning strike into it. He'd done his best to ignore everything that wasn't directly related to powering it, but even though he knew how important it was make sure time went on flowing along its proper course he wasn't a plaster saint; once or twice he knew that his eyes had strayed, and it was hard to forget the things he'd seen.

He distracted himself with lesser inventions, filling his home with contraptions that made his toast, or buffed his shoes, or automatically hit the snooze button on his alarm clock for him three times before forcing him to get up. He only worked on parts of the time machine when the technology level of the world caught up to whatever he needed to do, or at least came close enough that he might have been able to work it out entirely on his own.

All in all if felt like he spent decades waiting more than living. Waiting for the world to catch up with him. Waiting to build his greatest creation.

Waiting for his closest friend to be born.

And that managed to be even more frustrating than hold back on his inventions. He wasn't really an anti-social man by nature; he got so caught up in his work that he could go weeks without seeing another person and never realize it sometimes, and he hadn't met many people who were willing to even try follow along with his trains of thought for long, but it was good to have other people around sometimes. Both for companionship and as a sounding board for his ideas. And occasionally as guinea pigs, admittedly.

But rumors which had already been spouting up about him in the '50s had ballooned over the years until he'd gone from being seen as an eccentric member of the community to the crazy old man who'd once supposedly burnt down his own home. A few of his neighbors would still nod to him if they saw him on the street, but nobody wanted to be seen in his company.

He kept an eye on the McFlys over the years, trying not to be obvious about it. He watched as the first son joined their family and then the daughter, but as the final months were coming near he got caught up in a novelty project to build canine exercise equipment for Einstein and was caught completely by surprise when one day he came across Lorraine at the market already heavily pregnant.

She was stretching to try and reach a certain baking pan at the top of their display but wasn't having any luck, so he reached over her head to pull it down for her with an, "Allow me."

She looked startled for a moment, then her expression warmed into a surprisingly genuine smile. "Why Doctor Brown, I don't think I've seen you in years. George, look who it is!" This she called down the aisle, and a moment later George McFly stuck his head around the corner of the aisle and looked just as happy as his wife to see him.

"Doc Brown!" he said, coming over to join them.

"I'm sorry, have we spoken before?" he asked, more than a little baffled by the warm reception. He might have exchanged a word or two with George when Marty had been tutoring him in the ways of courting, but if so he couldn't remember them.

"Well, not really," Lorraine admitted, "but your nephew Marty was such a good friend of ours."

"More than that! We have him to thank for our marriage, and he might just be the reason I got together the guts to send in my first manuscript," George added. "Whatever happened to him? We've been wondering for years, but it always seemed like it would be kind of strange to hunt you down and ask, then once the kids started coming there was never any time."

"Oh, I-I'm terribly sorry to have to tell you this," he said, grasping after the first plausible excuse that came to mind, "but Marty passed away. In Vietnam."

Their smiles fell, and Lorraine went pale. "Oh no," she said. "Oh no. We always wondered why he never got back in touch, but we really only knew each other for a few days, after all, and we didn't change _his_ life the way he changed ours, so we just thought..."

"We never even imagined he wasn't still out there somewhere, helping out other dumb kids when he found them," George added when she trailed off, raking his hand through his hair. "Listen, we're sorry. We didn't mean to bring up a bad memory."

"No no, I'm sure he'd be happy that you remembered him," Doc said, perfectly honestly. "In fact, he talked about the two of you so often while he was staying with me that I felt like I knew you." Also almost true, though it had been less about them and more about how much trouble he'd be in if they didn't get together.

"Doctor Brown..." Lorraine said hesitantly, glancing at her husband and resting her hand on her rounded stomach. "You know, when we were talking about names for this little fellow, one of the things we were considering was naming him after the boy who brought us together. I've always liked the name Marty anyway. Would you mind if we decided to go with that? You wouldn't find it disrespectful, would you?"

"Not at all!" he said, staring at her stomach perhaps a little more intently than would be normal. His young friend was closer to him than he'd been in well over a decade, and now he had his name. It would be years yet before he grew into the young man that he'd known and head back in time to meet him, but... "And if you ever need a babysitter or anything like that, I would love to meet my nephew's little successor."


End file.
